Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert) (24 page)

The palace kitchens, unlike the Peysimun kitchens, did not welcome nobles sitting in the corner room eating rough bread and cheese. But they were willing to carry trays to the rooms, which had always struck Alyea as a waste of effort.

Still, a palace had to run by different rules than a small noble household. Alyea had long ago adjusted her suite to make dining in a comfortable option, and at least the servants here hadn’t changed. She always gave them a small coin each time they brought her a tray or performed any housekeeping tasks for her.

In return, they always knocked; and if she didn’t answer, they left her alone without argument. It had settled into a comfortable arrangement over time, one she felt a certain trust in; so when the door opened and she heard someone enter her outer suite, her first reaction was annoyance that they’d broken the understanding.

But: “Alyea,” Eredion said from the outer room. She hopped out of bed, grabbing up a robe and cursing under her breath.

“What do you want?” Emerging from her bedroom, she stopped to stare.

He’d brought a tray. Almost overflowing with bowls and plates containing hot soup, thick chunks of peasant bread, soft cheese, roughly cut carrots and peppers, it filled the small dining table in the outer room and wafted thick, rich aroma into the air.

“I’m hungry,” Eredion said, pointing her to a chair, “and I don’t see any reason to eat alone.”

She hesitated, glancing down at the thin robe she’d wrapped round herself; looked up to find Eredion’s gaze on the robe too.

“One moment,” she said a bit sharply, and his gaze jumped to her face without the least trace of embarrassment.

Retreating into her bedroom, she shut the door and stood still for a moment, wrestling with sudden fear. It was stupid to think that Eredion would try force with her, when he could easily get any woman in the palace into his bed at a moment’s notice. All the same, she put on her most conservative long blue dress—with a high collar that went halfway up her neck and sleeves that cuffed at the wrist; she’d used it last to hide the bruises Pieas had left on her—before returning to the outer room of the suite.

Eredion didn’t even look up as she came out of the bedroom, too busy scooping black bean soup into chunky white ceramic bowls. He dumped a dollop of soft cheese on top of each, and tore off two wide strips of thick crust from the loaf of peasant bread to serve as rough spoons.

She sat and accepted the bowl he passed her. They ate without speaking until the tray was cleared. Eredion ate the bulk of the meal; Alyea found herself astonished at how much food the man could put away.

“You’ll do the same, soon enough,” Eredion said, then glanced up at Alyea’s sharp intake of breath. “What?”

“I thought only Deiq could read my thoughts. Only ha’ra’hain.” Sweat prickled the back of her neck; she ignored the itchiness with a fierce effort.

He stared at her, eyes wide, for a few moments. “No,” he said at last, his expression smoothing out to a blandness she was coming to recognize as meaning he’d decided not to tell her something. “You’ve a lot to learn yet.”

“Apparently.” She sat back, annoyed, and thought hard about the stifling heat in the room, and the garlic-onion sharpness of the soup she’d just eaten.

Eredion, now looking mildly amused, commented, “Better. But I wouldn’t worry over it too much. You can’t keep yourself locked up all the time. Part of being a desert lord is understanding that, and not getting too upset over another person’s stray thoughts, or even taking them too seriously.”

“Why don’t
I
hear
your
thoughts?” Now her arms were beginning to sweat. She should have gone with a lighter dress. Choosing this one had been a pure panic reaction, and stupid.

“Part of the change,” he shrugged. “It’ll come to you sooner or later.”

“About the time I get randy?” she said, then bit her tongue, wishing she hadn’t brought that topic up.

He laughed. “Something like that,” he admitted, then studied her dress with an amused expression, as though really focusing on it for the first time.

“Good gods,” he said, “talk about overreacting. Do you have a knife hidden in a leg sheath, too?”

She felt her face flare into hot color; he leaned back in his chair and hooted with laughter.

“That bloody thing is far too heavy for this weather,” he told her. “The robe would have been better. It’s not as though I would have raped you, for the love of the gods! I have better control than
that
.”

She ducked her head, unable to face his grin.

“Ah, Alyea,” he said, in a tone that suddenly reminded her of Azaniari. “You have
so
damn much to learn.”

“Then tell me!” she snapped, anger pushing aside embarrassment. “Deiq’s no better than Chac, handing out little bits and pieces of information as it suits him. I can’t learn anything that way!”

Eredion’s mouth quirked, and he began putting dishes back onto the tray.

“Believe me, I know the feeling,” he said. “But remember that you’re something of an unusual case, Alyea. You’re out in the world much sooner than you should be after your trials. And training a desert lord is a very delicate process, part of which is gauging what information to deliver when. Deiq’s the one in charge of your training, not me. I’m not going to interfere and tell you something he doesn’t think you’re ready to hear yet.”

She glared at him. “But he’s not here,” she said, “and you are.”

“That means absolutely nothing with desert lords and ha’ra’hain,” he said soberly, and she suddenly remembered Evkit’s words:
Ha’reye talk together, miles away . . . They pass the word through the air, through the miles.

Alyea blinked hard and bit her lip, trying not to show her abrupt chill of fear.

Eredion smiled, a dry expression much like Deiq’s usual humorless grin, and stood, gathering up the tray.

“I’ll set this outside,” he said. “And then, as it’s stopped raining for the moment, I think you and I can risk a bit of a walk. I want to show you something. Go change first—you’d smother in that damn grandmother’s garb.”

Late morning sunlight feathered through honeysuckle-draped lattice that stood higher than their heads. Clusters of purple featherleaf flowers nodded over the top edges. Beyond the overgrown fencing someone played a flute, more noise than music, like a child practicing.

Alyea stared, bewildered; she’d never seen this before, and said so.

“No,” Eredion said, and urged her to keep walking along the fence. “It’s new. A matter of months.”

She glanced around, finally recognizing a building here, a tree there. “I know this place!” she said, astonished. “This was
ruins
last time I saw it.” She squinted at the fence, then moved to put her eye against the lattice.

Eredion pulled her back gently. “No,” he said. “Leave them their privacy, Alyea.”

“Leave
who
—” She stopped, remembering: Oruen had granted a last, stubborn holdout group of priests a small area at the western edge of the city.
This
area. Her suspicions darkened instantly. “What are they doing in there?” she demanded, glaring at Eredion.

“Healing the damage Rosin did,” he said. “Or trying to, at least.”

She stared at the lattice separating her from the last Northern Church priests in the city with a deep distaste. “Why did you want to show me
this
?”

“To remind you,” he said, nudging her into motion again, “about what’s worth worrying about.
This
matters. Not who you sleep with.”

She stopped walking and glared at him, remembering the look on his face when she’d first come out of the bedroom in a thin robe. “So this is your idea of an invitation?” she snapped, and felt stupid immediately; of course it wouldn’t be that simple. But apologizing wouldn’t do any good either, so she maintained her scowl and waited to see what he would say.

He shook his head, not reacting to the challenge at all, and gestured her to start walking.

They made a complete circuit of the enclosure, then Eredion stopped and said, “What did you notice, Alyea?”

She stared at him, then at the fence, baffled.

“What
isn’t
there?”

She glanced along the length of what she could see, and cast her mind back over the walk. “A gate,” she said. “They hid the gate.”

Eredion nodded. “They know people out here hate them, enough to make being visible dangerous. So they put up a high fence, and covered it with ivy, and hid the gate to avoid people even thinking about what’s inside. They just want to be left alone to repair, in their own small way, what a few damn fools did to this city.”

“What are they doing?”

Eredion shook his head. “It’s not my business to say. And they won’t tell you if you ask, because you could get them all killed with a careless word.” He glanced up as a cloud drifted overhead, dimming the sunlight. “We’d better get back. It’s going to start raining again soon.”

Still baffled over why Eredion had thought this important enough to walk halfway across the city to see, Alyea followed him back toward the palace.

The western part of Bright Bay had distinctly different architecture than the eastern: the majority of buildings here were set on thick, sturdy stone columns, leaving a tall floodway beneath. Roads lay as high as sidewalks, with a deep gutter on each side. The recent storms had washed away most of the dirt and sewage, and the worn cobbles were dark with moisture.

Many of the buildings had been badly damaged or destroyed, over the last fifty years, from a combination of severe storms and the Purge. Alyea rarely visited this side of town, finding it by far too depressing. Even now, as they walked, she could feel eyes watching them: the dispossessed thieves and beggars who had moved into the ruins around them, cobbling together rough shelters in which to wait out the worst of the afternoon storms.

Idisio had been one of them, not so long ago. Perhaps he hadn’t gone off with the tath-shinn after all, but simply slipped the leash and run back to his roots—

Lady Arnil’s whispery, smug voice came to mind:
likely returned to her roots and walking the streets. . . .

Alyea swallowed hard against sudden self-loathing and looked up to find Eredion watching her in a series of quick sideways glances as they walked.

He said, quietly, “I believe Idisio lived on the eastern side of town. But I doubt he returned to that life. He can’t go back to what he was, even if he wanted to.” He looked at the jagged remains of once-proud buildings lining the street. “But some of these drifters might well have known him. They move around regularly to avoid the guards.”

A shiver ran up Alyea’s back, and suddenly she felt very exposed. She realized that to a street thief, she would seem a tempting target. Her plain clothes would be seen as a badge of wealth, her boots a prize to be sold for food. She glanced over her shoulder, uneasy; the street behind was empty of traffic, but a skinny, black-haired child hung, head and shoulders, out of an upper window two buildings back. He stared at her with a calculating expression for just a moment, then withdrew from sight.

“They won’t bother us,” Eredion said, stopping and turning to look back himself. “They know who I am. In fact, while we’re here—” He gave a long, warbling whistle.

“Up here,” someone said to their left. Alyea looked up to find a gangly man perched on a stone column not far away. He grinned, revealing a mouthful of broken and missing teeth, and banged his dangling heels cheerfully against the stone on which he sat.

“Hai, hoy, you brought a pretty one by this time,” he added, studying Alyea with a keen interest. “She coming or going?”

“Lives here,” Eredion said mildly, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Inside.”

“Hai,” the man said, squinting. “Got ‘er. News, then?”

“Yes.”

“Bitch of the west side’s dying. Her squirt’s dying to move in on that.” The man broke off to cough, long and hard. He spat a brown gob to one side, politely aiming well clear of them. “Four more northerns swapped out this past tenday; Fern’s, Tavi’s, Belter’s, and that damn leatherman I been wantin’ to slice. Good riddance to
him
, anyway, but I’ll miss Fern. Man had a sense of rightness to him.”

Eredion’s brows drew into a faint, worried frown. “Are the newcomers fours?”

“One. Rest are just ordinaries.” He spat again, to his other side this time. “Wailer’s gone, too. Not a hint of it.”

Eredion hesitated, glancing sideways at Alyea, then said, “Any sight of Lifty?”

“Hah, hai!” The man rocked back, almost unbalancing off the column with the movement. He squinted at Alyea again, with an entirely different flavor of appraisal than before. “She’s that in it, hai?”

“Fair bit,” Eredion agreed, motioning Alyea to be quiet.

“Huh. Got ‘er.” The man winked at Alyea, then looked back to Eredion. “Nah. Nothing there, since he wound up in your uptown house. Figured you had him under thumb. He off again?”

“Slipped us,” Eredion said. “Looks like the wailer has him.”

“Huh.” The man shook his head, scratching just under his left ear for a moment. “Nah. Nothing here. We’ll watch it.”

“Thank you,” Eredion said gravely, and jerked his head at Alyea, signaling that it was time to move on. As they began walking again, a warbling trill of whistles broke out from several spots behind them. Eredion didn’t glance back; Alyea took her cue from that and kept her attention carefully ahead.

“Who’s the bitch of the west side?” Alyea asked when the noise died down.

“Lady Arnil,” Eredion said. Alyea nodded, unsurprised. “She’s been ill for a time. I don’t imagine she’ll make much longer.” He rubbed his forehead with a knuckle, seeming lost in thought for a few moments. At last he went on, “You’re safe walking around town for now; they’ve marked you as under my protection. Might be a good idea for you to make some alliances of your own, though. Street agreements change like the weather.”

“Oh, my mother’s going to
love
that,” Alyea said sourly, thinking that she’d never been afraid of walking through town before. Eredion’s protection seemed entirely unnecessary, and more than a little condescending.

“Don’t tell her,” Eredion said, as though Alyea were being unexpectedly dense. “It’s not as though you’ll be hosting thieves in your
house
, for the love of the gods.”

Alyea thought about protesting that she’d been trying for sarcasm; decided it would only make matters worse, and let it go.

The West Gate guards let them through with respectful nods to Eredion and a sly smile at Alyea. “Let be,” Eredion said in her ear before she could deliver a sharp rebuke for their obvious assumptions. He tucked his hand into the crook of her elbow, tugging her along.

“But they think—”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “If all they see is a desert lord with his latest lady of favor, they won’t remember
you
.”